You’ve spotted a brilliant-looking job online. Great location, great salary, interesting role. All aflutter, you upload your CV, hit send, and sit back, dreaming of the interview you know you’ll get (and ace), almost tasting that offer letter brimming with a massive salary hike.

A week goes by. Two weeks. Three weeks. A month. You never hear back.

Unfortunately, this is all too common for jobseekers, so here are six reasons why you never heard back.

1. Ugly CV

My colleague wrote a great article about formatting your CV for maximum impact. CV writing is a skill that’s difficult to master; that’s why CV writing services exist. Your CV is a marketing document to sell yourself. A clear, well formatted CV helps: if it isn’t easy to read, it won’t get read. If you struggle writing it, it’s worth paying a professional – a minor outlay (around £70/$120) that could result in a huge pay-off.

2. Skills to pay the bills

You know you can do the job with two hands tied behind your back, suspended upside down in a water tank. I don’t, unless you tell me. Make no assumptions. You know you’re a Software Engineer with 5 years experience of PHP development on a LAMP stack, but if you don’t tell me explicitly, I don’t know.

As a Technical Recruiter, I’ve seen far too many CVs where the candidate never mentions what technologies they use. My preference is to speak to candidates where I can immediately see that they are a strong match for the role. I probably will pick up the phone for a chat to a candidate who hasn’t listed their skills, but it won’t be my top priority when I have 3 great CVs that I am chasing instead.

3. Attenion [sic] to detail

Almost every candidate puts ‘attention to detail’ in their CV. Yet those same CVs contain spelling and grammar mistakes and other errors. “Mistakes on CVs” is often listed as the number 1 reason hiring managers reject an application. Using a recruiter helps because they proof-read and edit your CV, but mistakes also frustrate us. On a related note, applying to a job that isn’t relevant fails to show attention to detail.

You’ve seen the job title (e.g. Project Manager) and hit apply without properly reading the advert. Unfortunately, you’re a construction Project Manager applying to an IT Project Manager position leading Agile digital projects – not gonna happen. Read the advert carefully to ensure that the role is suitable for you. If it isn’t, you’re unlikely to hear back.

To read more | theundercoverrecruiter.com